yourself!"

"I could die of happiness to hear you say that!" Sanda answered. "You
see how it is, my friend, my dear, kind soldier? God has timed my coming
here to give me this wonderful gift! You wouldn't rob me of it if you
could, would you?"

"Not if it's for your happiness," Max heard something that was only half
himself answer. "But"--and he turned on Stanton--"how do you propose to
marry her--here?"

The other hesitated for an instant, then replied briskly, as if he had
calculated everything in detail. This was characteristic of him, to map
out a plan of campaign as he went along, as fast as he drew breath for
the rushing words. Often he had made his greatest impressions, his
greatest successes, in this wild way.

"Why, _you_ will pitch your camp here for the night, instead of marching
on to Touggourt," he said. "I camp here, too. My expedition is delayed
for one day more, but what does that matter after a hundred delays?
Heavens! I've had to wait for tents a beast of a Jew contracted to give
me and didn't. I've waited to test water-skins. I've waited for new
camel-men when old ones failed me. Haven't I a right to wait a few hours
for a companion--a wife? The first thing in the morning we'll have the
priest out from Touggourt. Sanda's Catholic. He'll marry us and we'll
start on together."

"Couldn't we," the girl rather timidly ventured the suggestion,
"couldn't we go to Touggourt? There must be a church there if there's a
priest, and I--I'd like to be married in a church."

"My darling child! The priest shall consecrate a tent, or a bit of the
desert," Stanton answered with decision, which, she must have realized,
would be useless to combat. "He'll do it all right! Marriage ceremonies
are performed by Catholic priests in houses, you know, if the man or the
woman is ill; deathbed marriages, and--but don't let us talk of such
things! I know I can make him do this when I show him how impossible it
would be for us to go back to Touggourt. Why, the men I've got together,
mostly blacks, would take it for a bad omen if I left the escort
stranded here in the desert the first day out! Half of them would bolt.
I'd have the whole work to do over again. You see that, don't you?"

Sanda did see; and even Max admitted to himself that the excuse was
plausible. Yet he suspected another reason behind the one alleged.
Stanton was afraid of things Sanda might hear in Touggourt; perhaps he
feared some more active peril.

"